Suburbs are Embracing Walkable Downtowns – Governing
Where are downtowns headed? One simple answer is intriguing, if somewhat fanciful: Perhaps they are headed to the suburbs.
They may be headed to places like Tempe, Ariz. In the past four years, in this suburban town of 184,000 that’s 10 miles outside Phoenix, a development has begun to rise that is explicitly trying to re-create downtown vitality and ambience in a seemingly unlikely place. Culdesac Tempe, which has drawn a fair amount of publicity, allows no cars inside its 17-acre expanse. Its goal, when built out, is to contain more than 700 apartments, 16,000 feet of retail commerce and 1,000 residents. “The removal of the car,” writes Robert Steuteville of the Congress for the New Urbanism, “allows for a porous, fine-grain urban pattern with a network of narrow, shaded pedestrian-only paseos, intimate courtyards and a central plaza.”
